Anthony Mackie stars as White House Deputy National Security Advisor Sam Coulson, in DreamWorks Pictures' "The Fifth Estate," a dramatic thriller based on true events.

Photo: Frank Connor, Touchstone Pictures

Anthony Mackie stars as White House Deputy National Security...

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Carice Van Houten stars as Icelandic social activist and Member of Parliament, Birgitta J—nsd—ttir in DreamWorks Pictures' ÒThe Fifth Estate," a dramatic thriller based on true events.

Photo: Frank Connor, Touchstone Pictures

Carice Van Houten stars as Icelandic social activist and Member of...

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Academy Award¨-nominee Stanley Tucci stars as James Boswell, Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs in DreamWorks Pictures' ÒThe Fifth Estate," a dramatic thriller based on true events.

Photo: Frank Connor, Touchstone Pictures

Academy Award¨-nominee Stanley Tucci stars as James Boswell,...

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(left to right) Marcus (Moritz Bleibtreu), known as The Architect, Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel BrŸhl), Julian Assange's right-hand man, Birgitta J—nsd—ttir (Carice Van Houten), Icelandic social activist and Member of Parliament and young WikiLeaks recruit, Ziggy (Jamie Blackley) are featured in this scene from DreamWorks PicturesÕ ÒThe Fifth Estate.Ó A dramatic thriller based on true events, ÒThe Fifth EstateÓ reveals the quest to expose the deceptions and corruptions of power that turned an Internet upstart into the 21st centuryÕs most fiercely debated organization.

Photo: Frank Connor, Touchstone Pictures

(left to right) Marcus (Moritz Bleibtreu), known as The Architect,...

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Academy Award¨-nominee Laura Linney stars as Deputy Undersecretary of State Sarah Shaw, in DreamWorks PicturesÕ ÒThe Fifth Estate,Ó a dramatic thriller based on true events. ÒThe Fifth EstateÓ reveals the quest to expose the deceptions and corruptions of power that turned an Internet upstart into the 21st centuryÕs most fiercely debated organization.

Photo: Frank Connor, Touchstone Pictures

Academy Award¨-nominee Laura Linney stars as Deputy Undersecretary...

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Daniel BrŸhl (left) and Benedict Cumberbatch star as Daniel Domscheit-Berg and Julian Assange, respectively, in DreamWorks PicturesÕ ÒThe Fifth Estate.Ó A dramatic thriller based on true events, ÒThe Fifth EstateÓ reveals the quest to expose the deceptions and corruptions of power that turned an Internet upstart into the 21st centuryÕs most fiercely debated organization.

The Fifth Estate

It's probably too early to make a movie about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, and "The Fifth Estate" reflects this. Based on a book by Daniel Berg, who was an Assange associate, the movie can't quite decide what it thinks of him - or even if it should decide at all. The filmmakers take for granted that Assange is something of a creep, at least as a person, but consider it an open question whether Assange is an inspired, visionary creep or a regular one. And as for whether WikiLeaks has done more good or harm, the filmmakers don't really know.

This ambivalence of viewpoint - not complexity, but flat-out ambivalence - is indicated by three separate scenes, near the finish, in which various characters discuss the impact and historical implications of what Assange did. A range of opinions is expressed, and all of them sound valid. They probably all sounded good to the filmmakers, too. The problem here isn't that the movie doesn't tell us what to think, but that the people behind the movie don't seem to know what to think, either.

Yet here's the thing: In a few decades, when time sorts out the effects of WikiLeaks and other Internet sites like it, the very ambivalence of "The Fifth Estate" might very well be seen as a virtue, as a document of an another era's honest confusion. But today, on a Friday in October in 2013, the movie's uncertainty doesn't help. It puts the audience in the position of having to sort through an unsifted pile of information, as though dealing with a document dump.

"The Fifth Estate" attempts to cover a lot. We get the story of the organization - for a lot of the way, it was just Assange and Berg - as they pursued Assange's idea of exposing the secrets of governments and powerful organizations, while keeping the identities of whistle-blowers secret. Perhaps any one of the WikiLeaks stories was complex enough to form an entire movie. Getting these stories in shorthand means that the viewer is often in the position of not quite knowing what's going on or even what's being exposed. It's almost as if the screenwriters assume we've all just read a book about Assange before walking into the theater.

The movie's style is as cold as its subject. Graphics pop up on the screen to tell us what European city the characters happen to be in, and the camera hovers and moves around them, as if getting slightly nervous. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Assange as an odd person, incapable of warmth or genuine connection, randomly rude and without the impulse of kindness. We see him mainly through the eyes of Berg (Daniel Brühl), who finds him a charismatic figure, which we also recognize. Cumberbatch embodies the magnetism of someone possessed by an idea.

"The Fifth Estate" becomes more focused in its last hour, when it concentrates on the Bradley Manning leak of tens of thousands of U.S. diplomatic documents. It shows how WikiLeaks worked with print publications in three countries to release these pages and how Assange became increasingly untrustworthy and cavalier about revealing the identities of informants, whose lives, as a result, were placed in danger. Laura Linney plays a mid-level career diplomat whose confidential e-mails are exposed.

To watch "The Fifth Estate" is to share the filmmakers' ambivalent feelings. No one wants to live under a monolithic government that can do anything to anybody and never be exposed - or that protects wrongdoers under the false cover of national security. At the same time, you can't have honest communication within a government - you can't really conduct business - if you have to worry that, at any moment, some 22-year-old private is going to publish all your e-mails and memos on the Internet. Only people who find comfort in extreme positions would be happy to put up with either situation.

"The Fifth Estate" raises these issues, which are interesting, and so the movie is reasonably interesting, as well. Not entirely successful or appealing - not exactly a delightful evening in the company of scintillating characters - but interesting all the same.